Away We Go

Director: Sam Mendes
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 1.0

Finally, a movie for the 30-something granola & sandals set who spend their relatively carefree days worrying about the environment and what kind of parents they will be. Financially stable couple Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski (doubling for literary 'heroes' Vendela Vida and Dave Eggers) travel this way and that interacting with two groups of parent figures: nut jobs and sad messes (sometimes they're sad and crazy) in order to look for that perfect place to raise their unborn child. It's best when it at least tries to be humorous and fun (the sequence with Alison Janney and cuckold Jim Gaffigan), but when it becomes a series of scenes in which Krasinski and Rudolph stare wistfully into the horizon while Nick Drake-esque songs dominate the soundtrack, it reaches a point of repulsive self-complacency that is hard to become enamored with. Mendes is apparently well-respected as a theater director - when working with tried and true material - but he's not a good enough filmmaker to compensate for mediocre scripts.